Tag Archives: Beauty

I hope you’ve enjoyed my examination in media’s portrayal of beauty. I want to momentarily talk about what two things women said they wanted to be changed from the media. The first thing women around the world said they would like to see change is that female beauty should be portrayed in the media as being made up of more than just physical attractiveness (“The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report”). The second thing they wanted was for media to do a better job of portraying women of diverse physical attractiveness-age, shape, and size (“The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report”). Whether the media will heed these wishes, or not is unknown, however, with everyone coming together there is still hope.

In that survey a staggering amount of women agreed that a women can be beautiful at any age, every woman has something about her that is beautiful, and beauty can be achieved through attitude, spirit, and other attributes that have nothing to do with physical appearance (“The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report”). I think we need to focus on that instead of whatever the media throws our way.

I want to leave you with one last thing. The next time you are watching TV, or flipping through the pages of a magazine, or driving past a large billboard, I hope you stop and think for a moment. What exactly are you seeing? First of all, is it real? Has it been enhanced or altered through methods of Photoshop? If it is real, is it realistic or has the individual been dieting and working out all day every day, or (hopefully not) could they have an eating disorder? If you feel guilty or inadequate, take a step back and remember all of the reasons why you are beautiful. Stop comparing yourself to others and instead embrace your own beauty.

With media surrounding us, it may seem impossible to ever change the effects their portrayals of beauty have on us. However, I would like to offer some tips from Oprah Winfrey’s website (the woman whom most plastic surgery patients try and model their forehead after, as discussed in my earlier post).

The first tip is to stop buying into the media (“Women and Body Image”). They suggest that you don’t buy the magazines or limit the amount of television you watch (“Women and Body Image”). The next tip is to insert yourself into a healthier environment (“Women and Body Image”). They say that you should not hang around with shallow people who will judge you only by appearance. The article goes on to say how important it is to look in the mirror and learn to love yourself (“Women and Body Image”). This step may be hard at first, but the more you try and focus on what you like, rather than what you want to change, the better. Another helpful tip is to discuss your body image issues with someone (“Women and Body Image”). If you can talk about what is stressing you out, then by bringing those concerns to the light of reason, the person you are talking about it with can help you see your true beauty (“Women and Body Image”). The last tip in the article and the one I find the most helpful is to not compare yourself to other women (“Women and Body Image”).

“Every woman in America is affected by a feeling of inadequacy that they are never young enough, thin enough or pretty enough. Women must counter that irrational and destructive impulse to ordinariness by identifying the unique gift that only they have and which the world needs in order to be perfected. Find your gift (“Women and Body Image”).”

We’ve talked a lot about what the media puts forward, but now I would really like to break that down in the sense of how it relates to a woman’s inner self. I would first like to start out with a video from Dove. This video shows women describing their looks to an FBI artist. Then a different person comes in and describes the same person. The differences in the pictures, even though they were described about the same person are surprising.

As you saw by the video, those women were not generous in the way they described themselves. We could credit that to a possible modesty or we could also say that they do not picture themselves as beautiful. In fact, Dove created a study in ten different countries to see how comfortable women were with describing their looks and if they were satisfied with those looks called “The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report”

One of the interesting things about this report is the fact that women tend to not use the word “beautiful” to describe themselves. Instead they turn to words such as natural (31%) or average (29%) (“The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report” 9). Only a small 2% described themselves as beautiful and 4/10 women strongly agreed to feeling uncomfortable using that word for their own looks (“The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report” 11).

The majority of females remain “somewhat satisfied” with their beauty (58%), physical attractiveness (59%), and facial attractiveness (58%) (“The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report” 19). These women are likely to be the group most receptive to the media’s portrayal of beauty, because even though they have some satisfaction with how they look, the also believe they could be more satisfied (“The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report” 20). In my next post I hope I will offer some solutions to the media’s portrayal of beauty.

As I mentioned in the previous post, not all celebrities are embracing their true beauty like Brad Pitt and Jessica Simpson. One such person would be Amanda Bynes. Amanda used to be such a good role model, however now I would hope that young girls and women alike would not listen to what she says. I don’t want to say that she is a bad person, however, her Twitter is not very positive…at all!

Some things that she goes on to say are, “If you look good words can’t hurt you (Bynes). I just weighed myself and I’m 114! Only 14 lbs closer to 100 (Bynes)! It doesn’t matter if you feel sexy if you don’t look sexy (Bynes). There’s a surgery for everything that’s wrong with you (Bynes)! If you’re not hot I don’t value your opinion (Bynes).”

When I first saw those quotes on her Twitter feed I was shocked! What happened to the sweet girl from the movie She’s the Man? I don’t even know her and I felt like I had been insulted. When she talks about trying to get down to 100 pounds, I momentarily questioned whether I should be trying to do the same thing. When she says she doesn’t care about opinions if they don’t come from a hot person, I felt like I had to defend myself. The biggest one to me was that you have to look sexy to feel sexy. I immediately was yelling at my laptop saying, “NO YOU DON’T!!” These small sentences hold a lot of power. Power she may not even realize she has. If she could generate those types of emotions from me, imagine what type of things she could make other women do.

On her feed she also goes on to talk about surgery. Her nose surgery, her “corrective” surgeries, so many plastic surgeries!!! I will talk more about plastic surgery in my next post.

I am going to embark on a project to analyze media’s role today in the portrayal of beauty, aimed specifically at women. The goal of this project is not necessarily to point fingers at media, but to show the consequences they have created by only advertising a certain type of “beauty.” I hope to do this by using sources such as websites, videos, and case studies.

I consider myself very independent from what the world may think of me, however, I too have found myself questioning what I look like. Am I pretty enough, am I skinny enough, is my nose too round, is my hair too crazy? I quickly am able to get society’s voice out of my head and feel content again, but my concern is with the women that can’t. I would venture to say that almost every woman, whether consciously or subliminally, has been at least slightly affected by media, and that is why I care about this topic.